Most people are optimists, although they may claim they are not. People who call themselves realists are often the biggest optimists of all.

Acknowledge your good fortune by sharing it.

Why' is a crooked letter and can't be made straight.

There's a Mr. Hyde for every happy Jekyll face, a dark face on the other side of the mirror.

It was how wars really ended, Dieffenbaker supposed -- not at truce tables but in cancer wards and office cafeterias and traffic jams. Wars died one tiny piece at a time, each piece something that fell like a memory, each lost like an echo that fades in winding hills. In the end even war ran up the white flag. Or so he hoped. He hoped that in the end even war surrendered.

That was what I wanted, but I don't need it to be gone. I can love you and I can love life and bear the pain all at the same time. I think the pain might even make the rest better, the way a good setting can make a diamond look better.

You want to remember that while you're judging the book, the book is also judging you.